Caol Ila 12 – the virginia woolf

She’s facing the water.

She’s sitting at the same teak railing, braced against it and between you and the sea, but she does nothing to acknowledge your arrival.

You think you know this moment – this scene of teak and salt and sky – and you are expecting for her to look at you and say something. But she says nothing, not even looking at you with that warm Lagavulin expression, all but ignoring you entirely, only staring off against the water.

And so the moment hangs in the air between you, threatening to drift away in the forgiving breeze, and you don’t say anything but you’re still staring, regarding this person and then regarding this sea, staring where she’s staring and wondering what she is thinking.

She’s silent and looking off, un-acknowledging, tangled in her own thoughts. You realize, watching her, that she is more beautiful than she probably realizes. She’s looking off at the sea, a pensive stare that is only still… and not empty. And there’s this brief moment where a more simple man may have already written her off. But, pausing a moment more, you realize that there may be something there.

And then, after what seems like an eternity, as the final moment has all but slipped away in a stretch of stillness, she finally turns her head and glances back at you, her eyes still cast dark but directly, starkly at you, back and over her shoulder. And, seeing you, she gives you this sad but solemn look. This look of knowing; of pure artistry; a modern “Virginia Woolf” expression if there ever was one.

And in that moment there’s a captivation, a sad complexity to it. And yet, despite its surface sadness, in the mere seconds in which you are tethered there, she also seems okay. It’s a spritely pick-up – a delayed acknowledgement but with a ripple, as though to smile: “yeah…. I know. But it’s okay.”